THE PAINTER OF THE HUNGARIAN LANDSCAPES, ARTICLE OF HELYI THÉMA, 2005

The work of Imre Égerházi is closely connected to the Hegyvidék. His works will be exhibited in the near future in an exhibition to be held at the former MOM House of Culture.

His ancestors also included renowned painters. They also received nobility from György I. Rákóczi for their service. In their coat of arms, the knight holds a sword in his left hand and a brush and palette in his right hand. The legacy of the ancestors, the special talent of “pictorial writing” reached Imre Égerházi, one of the most unique and modern painters of the last century.

He was born in 1925 in Hajdúhadház. Although he worked as a clerk in his youth, he always knew that the brush and canvas were his “work tools”. As a child, he pressed a little oil paint into his left palm to be with him all day at school. In the early 30s, when he received a box of colored chalk as a gift, he drew on almost everything that could be counted as a good surface for a child-painter; walls, fences, sidewalks. He became a renowned painter from the talented forerunner of today’s graffiti. Imre Égerházi’s career (although he was not born here) started in the Hegyvidék and he always came happily to this part of the capital.

The artist’s first exhibition was also held at the former MOM, with tremendous success. The big start was followed by hundreds of individual and group exhibitions in Buda, Pest and all around the country, Europe and overseas. But even during the successes, he learned from everyone with tenacious consistency. In museums, from street painters and artists, standing in their windows and spying away trade tricks. He created a unique world in his paintings in which there was no movement, no birds flying, no chariots, no galloping horses. Yet the special painting of objects has lent dynamics to his works that are impossible to imitate. In addition to capturing Hungarian landscapes and people, Transylvania was his eternal love. There is almost no corner of this region that he would not have captured in his sketches, drawings, or paintings.

Imre Égerházi is also considered one of the most important Hungarian patrons of Hungarian art across the border. One of his critics compared his art to the elegy of Árpád Tóth.

“Like bushes heavy with dark berries,
Like the underbelly os snow filled with critters,
My heart is filled with cold benevolence.”

Helyi Téma (District 12), 15-06-2005, 2^nd year, issue 23